


alesia

by ballantine



Series: noble consuls of rome [3]
Category: Ancient History RPF, Rome (TV 2005)
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Governing, M/M, Orgy, Unresolved Sexual Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-31
Updated: 2020-06-01
Packaged: 2021-03-03 03:56:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 9,549
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24478318
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ballantine/pseuds/ballantine
Summary: Antony wanted to say to him,if you do not take ownership of this consulship, I will have to. I'll do it, and you won't like the results.But Brutus had enough people prompting him in every other corner of his life. Antony didn't want to be another. He didn't want anything from the man he didn't first decide to give.
Relationships: Mark Antony/Marcus Junius Brutus the Younger
Series: noble consuls of rome [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1730350
Comments: 20
Kudos: 42





	1. Chapter 1

Antony's thighs positively ached from the many exertions of the night as he arrived back at the house.

Brutus was still awake and sat up in the atrium. By the looks of it, he had washed and changed into clean garb, but was somehow dreadfully sober. One wouldn't know anything had happened earlier if not for his disquieted expression.

He looked over at Antony, sharp eyes likely not missing any spot of evidence of how _he_ had spent the evening: the dappling of bruises and grubby layer of dried sweat, the way he stood wavering and loose-limbed before Brutus, too tired to not look back.

“I've been thinking it over,” Brutus said quietly, “and I remembered no one else knew I was to accompany you to that house.”

“Yes,” said Antony. He'd realized it almost immediately: whoever released the lion into that house had been aiming for only one consul's death.

Brutus would be within his rights to ask him to leave. He wouldn't even have to worry about appearing disloyal in the public eye; consuls, after all – as so many have taken care to inform him – did not generally cohabitate.

But – Brutus was Brutus. He flashed one of his unhappy little smiles and finally looked down. He said, “We'll have to revise our security measures. You shouldn't go anywhere alone.” Like you did this evening, he did not need to add.

Freed of his gaze, Antony approached. With a slight grunt, he lowered himself to sit on the floor, using an unoccupied chair across from Brutus as a headrest. He wanted more wine. He wanted to sleep for twelve hours.

He shut his eyes and said, “You forget, dear Brutus, the dissolute years of my youth. I know how to slip through the city unseen.”

“A consul of Rome does not _slip through the city unseen_ ,” said Brutus, a trace of testiness surfacing. “He – proceeds. With dignity.”

He lifted a hand and just as quickly let it drop over his stomach like deadweight. “As you like. I proceeded, with great dignity, through alleyways and over roofs.”

They did not speak of the moment that passed between them against the wall earlier. Antony was loathe to poke that sleeping mongoose.

In the days that followed, they said nothing publicly about the assassination attempt but began watching their colleagues more closely. Antony did not agree with the decision to keep the assassination plot secret – he wanted to drag it out in the open and stare down every face in the senate, meet the threat head-on.

But Brutus shook his head and said, “If word gets out, we'll only be giving our enemies a wider audience for their grievances. Neutral parties will hear of the attempt and wonder what we did to deserve it. I won't be the one to plant that seed.”

Brutus, like Janus who he revered, had two faces. He was now wearing his public face, the one that convinced fifty-nine senators he belonged at the head of a conspiracy to take down the head of government. It was thoughtful, measured, and calm, and a more often than not a complete lie.

To the outside world, the man appeared self-assured, but Antony could see he was still hesitating. Waiting.

Antony wanted to say to him, _if you do not take ownership of this consulship, I will have to. I'll do it, and you won't like the results._ Because Brutus rarely liked Antony's results; there was a reason they spent years mostly avoiding one another in the political realm.

But Brutus had enough people prompting him in every other corner of his life. Antony didn't want to be another. He didn't want anything from the man he didn't first decide to give.  
  


* * *

  
The next day, Antony took ten men with him back to the house, and slayed the lion with great prejudice. He briefly considered tossing the giant carcass in front of Cassius's house, but in the end he kept the skin. He was raised on stories of Hercules, from whose son Anton his line claimed its descent. It felt fitting.  
  


* * *

  
When they first heard that graffiti had appeared throughout the city linking Octavian to the attempt on his life, Antony's first reaction was one of relief.

“Splendid news,” he said. They were eating breakfast – rather, Brutus was eating breakfast and reading over correspondence. Antony was nursing a hangover. He sat with his head back on a couch, a damp towel draped over his face. “I was worried it would become a long, drawn-out affair, full of tedious plotting and constant vigilance. If we know it was him, I can just kill the boy and be done with it.”

But Brutus said, “You can't, I'm afraid. Leaving aside the mess we'd have to deal with in the Senate if you killed one of Cicero's clients – if we took every message someone scrawled on a wall as admissible, Caesar would've been right to have me killed for plotting against him.”

“You were plotting against him,” Antony pointed out, words muffled by the towel.

“Not then, I wasn't. Not _yet_.” Brutus was unbearable company when he managed to duck a hangover. It was like he caught a glimpse of immortality and instantly forgot the suffering of all lesser beings.

Antony wanted to reply, _and look how you repaid his trust_ , but then Brutus would refuse to talk to him for some undetermined length of time. Instead he said, perfectly reasonable, “But it didn't exactly turn out well for him, did it. And you endorse this as our strategy?”

Brutus chewed his cheek. He raised his chin. “It's the right thing to do.”

Antony let his disgust simmer for a few seconds and then could do nothing except ball up the towel and throw it at him.  
  


* * *

  
His security problem saw some progress when Legionary Pullo came to see him one afternoon, four days after the incident with the lion. Finally, Fortuna tossed him a wink.

“Bit of bad business, sir,” said Pullo, standing straight and tall and dumb as a Pantheon column. “Centurion Vorenus – he killed his wife and then he, well, he cursed his children to Hades.”

Antony, seated behind his desk, said, “I see.”

He continued, for apparently there was more, “And when he heard about Caesar, he flew into a rage and burned his house to the ground.” Pullo gave a small grimace, like he thought mentioning the recent tyrannicide might be awkward. “Now neither me or my girl can get him to shift himself from his bedroll.”

Antony nodded slowly. “That sequence of events might lead one to a bit of melancholy, yes. Here,” he said abruptly, rising from the hated desk. “Lead me to him.”

It was a fine day for a walk, made all the finer with the feeling that he was shirking work. Pullo led him through the streets he knew, into parts he had never stepped, and then somehow further out yet – they crossed from recognizable Roman boroughs into a chaotic maze of mortal misery and shit, a tributary of the Acheron surfacing right there on the edges of the city.

“I don't suppose you or Vorenus would happen to know why the Aventine has gone to pieces?” he inquired as they skirted the neighborhood in question and made for – Jupiter's _stone_ – the tight-quartered shacks that bordered the city docks. “I've been hearing of little else all day.”

“That might have something to do with the death of Erastes Fulmen,” said Pullo. Antony waited. “...Brother Vorenus cut off his head.”

“Our man doesn't do anything by halves, does he,” he murmured.

“No, sir.” Pullo sounded almost proud.

They arrived at a squat structure made of wood and rags and seemingly held together through the determination of the Germanic freedwoman scrubbing a pot a few feet from the door. She kept her eyes down as Antony passed, though she muttered something in her barbarian tongue.

Pullo parted the cloth over the doorway, and Antony stepped inside. He had to duck his head, and this made him irritable.

It was a wholly pathetic sight: Vorenus was curled on his side in the far corner of the dark shack: bearded, filthy, and empty of expression. There was no disguising or arguing with his abject state. Looking down at him, Antony felt some manner of violent emotion roll up from within. For the sake of his own sanity, he chose to characterize it as pity, rather than jealousy.

Perhaps Pullo felt his slight recoil, for he bellowed past his ear, “Vorenus! Officers afoot!”

This was enough to jerk the man from his coma; he blinked and half sat, looking so much like a new recruit caught scratching his balls in formation.

“Centurion Vorenus,” he said, stepping forward. Even as his man scrambled up to standing, looking overwhelmed, he sneered, “Look at the fucking state of you.”

“It's – mourning dress, sir,” said Vorenus, dazed. It might have been the first words he'd spoken in days.

“ _Mourning_?” he scoffed. Mourning dress these days was as good as a declaration.

Behind him, Pullo coughed. “His wife and children, sir.”

Right.

He considered the man anew. He made a show of it: stepping close and looking him up and down, smelling him, inspecting him like a slave at auction. He took his time and lingered long enough for the insult to finally filter through Vorenus's grief-dulled brain. The moment Antony noticed his shoulders stiffen, he said:

“Why are you still alive? From what Pullo tells me, any decent Roman would have done the honorable thing and opened his belly.”

“Like you did, sir?” Vorenus's voice was rough, like he hadn't spoken in days. His eyes found Antony's and didn't move.

Antony heard Pullo's sharp intake of breath behind him. He allowed his lips to curl into a smile. “Are you trying to provoke me, Centurion? Take the coward's way out?”

“No, sir.” Vorenus's eyes drifted away again. “Dis is my master and he will take me when he chooses. At present, he wishes me to suffer on this earth.”

The thought that this wretched man might have one day given a speech in the senate house was almost dizzying. Antony spared a moment's regret that he would never get to witness such a spectacle.

He lay a hand tenderly at the crux of where his shoulder and neck met and murmured into his ear, “You are wrong – Dis is not your master. _I_ am your master. You swore a sacred oath to me under the standards of the thirteenth. Have you forgotten?”

He was close enough to hear the dry click in Vorenus's throat as he swallowed. “How could I ever forget? You have made me party to the murder of a consul.”

Antony could tell him that Servilia had not deigned to explain to him how she would distract Vorenus outside the Senate on the Ides. But explanations were for equals or those between whom trust existed.

Instead, he said silkily, “You didn't kill Caesar, I did. And why should you feel anything about it? There wasn't a sacred practice or rule of this Republic that man didn't trample on, and make you, as his follower, answerable for to the gods – so why the regret?” He gripped the man's chin and turned his head to force his gaze. “What, because he spared you once or twice? Because he made you a senator?”

Vorenus's flinch was impossible to hide; Antony felt it through his fingertips.

“One such as you does not belong in the Senate, Lucius.” He softened his voice, knowing his tone would be interpreted as malice, and his words as an insult.

Vorenus stared blindly forward. “No, sir,” he agreed, jaw like granite.

Antony clapped him lightly along the neck and let his hand drop. “Now, then,” he said, stepping away, “Consul Brutus and I are attempting to restore order to the Republic. I require your assistance – you are to join my personal guard first thing tomorrow, and you won't be dismissed until I am satisfied the danger has passed. Do you understand?”

He waited for a nod, and upon receiving it, he turned to leave.

“Are you looking for redemption?” asked Vorenus behind him.

Antony didn't turn around. He narrowed his eyes at the ragged flap of the shack, focusing on the uneven line of light peeking through the edges. It looked unbearably bright outside; it would surely hurt the other man's eyes after so long.

He said at last, calmly, “There is no redemption,” and quit the shack before the smell of Fulmen's rotting head in the corner could take up permanent residence in his nose.  
  


* * *

  
“I say, your bodyguard seems inordinately displeased with something,” said Lepidus on the steps of the Forum a few days later.

“That's just his face,” said Antony. “Pay him no mind.”

“And – is that a skull he carries at his side?”

Vorenus had taken the head of Erastes Fulmen and had the putrefying flesh flayed from the bone. He now wore it looped through his belt beside his scabbard. Antony was torn between impressed and disgusted but concluded it could only improve the fearsome reputation of his guard. He decided to allow the unorthodox alteration to the uniform.

“He has a few eccentricities,” is what he told Lepidus.  
  


* * *

  
The most tedious aspect of governing was that it never _stopped_. The day would not come when he could raise a standard over the city and declare it governed, good job lads, let's pack it in and have a round on me. If it wasn't a neighborhood self-immolating, then it was a bridge that needed repairs, or a feud broke out between two temple cults. And somehow all of it required money.

“Antony?” Brutus wandered into the bathhouse. He was carrying a tablet and had a certain look about him.

“No,” he said, sinking further down into the water.

His long face appeared overhead, quizzical. “No?”

“No consul business is to be conducted in the bath,” Antony said, the words burbling out. “Remember, we agreed.”

“I never agreed to that,” said Brutus. He lowered himself to the tile above him and set the tablet in his lap. “You've brought this on yourself, dodging me all morning—”

“I was touring the new canal site.”

He raised his eyebrows; Antony could not see it, but he could hear it in his voice. “And that involved laying about on a hillside for two hours, did it.”

“Auspices,” he said vaguely. “Checking the auspices. Never know when the gods might change their mind about the layout or something.” He blinked and twisted around with a violent splash of water. “How'd you know about that? Do you have spies in my retinue?”

“Your man Vorenus was most forthcoming. I like him,” Brutus decided. “That was a fine idea you had, appointing him head of your personal guard.”

“I'll open his throat,” said Antony.

“Might want to hold off for a while yet.” His tone went grim. “We have too many other problems at the moment. That's what I've come to tell you.”

  
  


(And the public herald read out:

“By grace of Jupiter, Gaius Octavian Caesar, lawful son of Gaius Julius Caesar, makes this his pledge: that he personally will fulfill the terms of his beloved father's bequest to the people. In the fields of Mars the next nine days, all eligible citizens and soldiers will receive seventy-five drachmas from the hands of Octavian Caesar himself. Let it be known that Caesar's son has sold away all his own property to honor his father's wishes. May such piety bring blessings upon him!”)

  
  


“Where did the little worm get the funds for that?” he demanded, standing out of the water: his bath thoroughly ruined. Brutus stood and handed him a towel. His eyes were bright and attentive as Antony wrapped it around his hips.

“I imagine with Cicero working on his behalf, his creditors felt confident enough to allow him to borrow against the inheritance.”

Antony hands slowed, his shoulders relaxed. “What trouble, then? Let the brat ruin his finances. We'll stop his inheritance, and the creditors will hound him from the city. Problem solved.”

“Mm,” came the noncommittal response, “and all those soldiers he gave the seventy-five drachmas to will simply stand aside and let that happen, you think?”

His mouth flattened. “I'll deal with that.”

Brutus merely nodded. He made to leave and hesitated. Antony watched him closely, waiting, but he only said, “Have you dealt with the Aventine?”

“The – yes, _yes_. I'll take care of that as well.”

“Good.” Brutus started walking away, and he felt obscurely at odd ends, like something had been left unfinished. He felt that increasingly these days; it was wearing down his already battered patience.

“Was there anything else?” he called to his back, hands adjusting the towel. “Sure you don't need me to build a road over the Alps or perhaps conquer Parthia before dinner?”

He didn't know why he said Parthia in particular, except that he knew it was still a sore spot, and he'd always been the type to tug togas.

Brutus looked back, but his expression was stubbornly serene. “Thank you, Antony, that does remind me – don't be late for dinner tomorrow, hm? The Egyptian queen is due to arrive, and she shall be a guest at our table.”  
  


* * *

  
The line of Caesar's would-be heirs occupying the Field of Mars stretched from the clock tower to the gaudy new theater Pompey had built shortly before the civil war. There was a faintly festive air over the grounds, like the Games or a triumph were on. It was terrible.

Antony strode up in the red-edged white toga of his station and was distantly satisfied every time someone leapt from his path like he was Hannibal on an elephant. The only person who would not get out of his way was sitting up on a dais, attended by a money-counter on one side and a burly figure of a man on the other – a guard. Octavian apparently had considered the age-old confusion around the chicken and the egg and decided to elevate his own importance by carrying protection he did not yet need.

“Octavian,” said Antony, “Dear boy, what's all this?”

Octavian bestowed a smile and a nod upon a grateful pleb, who backed away still murmuring oaths of fervent gratitude. Only then did the boy turn to the consul. One would never guess from his bland expression that Antony had spent years fucking his mother for all to hear throughtout the house.

“Mark Antony, greetings. Have you come for your allotment of drachmas?” His blue eyes were cold and guileless – guileless like how a tidal wave didn't bother with deception before it obliterated a coastal village.

Antony laughed and leaned one hand on the table, shaking his head. “And this is why you're never invited to parties not thrown by your own mother – your wit, it scares people off.... Your mother, how is she?”

“As well as one might expect, given the tragic passing my dear father.” He beckoned the next pleb to step forward.

Antony set his teeth. “Father, eh? You're really running with that, tying yourself to a declared tyrant.”

The money-counter passed off another stack of coins and made a note of the pleb's name. Octavian clasped the pleb's hand; out came his smile, like it was on a mechanized pulley system. He said aside to Antony:

“The people do not know that he was a tyrant, only that corrupt men could not stand to see someone actually wield power for the common good. Likewise, they do not know that you are a liberator, only that you cannot keep any peace that might allow lifeblood commerce to flourish.”

The fucking Aventine again.

Antony bent over the boy – and put up a hand to forestall his guard's step forward. He said lowly, “You know, when people say you are cold, I try telling them, 'no, no, you don't understand, underneath that icy exterior, there's actually a whole other layer of reptilian calculation that _itself_ masks who knows what kind of perverse soul' – but people never seem comforted by this. I haven't the faintest idea why. Do you know why?”

Octavian did not blink. It was like insulting polished marble. Antony stepped back and said, loudly magnanimous, “I'll leave you to it, then.”

“Please, feel free to stop by again for a visit,” said Octavian, leaning forward to wave up another pleb. “I will be here for eight more days.”

“Is he very much like his uncle?” asked Vorenus as they went away. “Only, I did not know the man as you did.”

“He's nothing like him,” said Antony, thinking _he's likely worse_.  
  


* * *

  
They stepped up to one another in the dim corridor outside the triclinium. Inside was light and music and conversation: outside was Brutus in the dark.

“Antony,” said Brutus.

“Brutus,” sighed Antony.

“The Aventine?”

He raised his hand in solemn oath. “I've put my best man on it.” He gave even odds to Titus Pullo making grand friends with the collegia or slaughtering the whole sorry lot. Either way: situation surely fixed.

“Excellent. Thank you.”

“Of course.” He sketched a mocking bow and then nodded at the door. “Have Atia and her children put in a showing?” he asked, wondering if he needed to gird his loins. Brutus had extended the invitation, persisting in his foolish desire for a show of unity.

Brutus frowned. “They sent their regrets and said they would not share a table with anyone submitting a rival claim to Caesar's paternity.”

His mood abruptly lifted. “Ah, well. I'm sure the Egyptian queen won't read too much into that.”

He moved to continue inside to the dinner, and Brutus put a hand out to stop him. Antony remained oriented to the doorway, but only because he suspected the hand would lift if he did not make a pretense at resistance.

“You've met our guest before?” he asked, and there was something in his tone that Antony could not parse.

He shrugged. “Briefly. In Alexandria we did not tarry too long in conversation – it wasn't wise to covet that which was Caesar's,” he added, at the questioning look.

“I wonder,” said Brutus, now passing him, his hand turning, briefly, into a lingering pat on the stomach, “whose distracted affections he would have resented more.”

Antony followed him inside, eyes fixed narrowly on his back.

Queen Cleopatra was no longer the skinny girl struggling for a throne. She was more assured, less hungry. She wore her Egyptian affectations boldly, not caring – or perhaps even enjoying – how they clashed with the austere Roman room and crowd. She had a way of lacing her words with subtle challenge and contempt, designed to incite reaction.

Antony was very incitable.

“You've changed since we last met,” he said to her.

“Have I seen you before?” she asked, slowly lifting her dark eyes to his.

His blood stirred and after a moment, he smiled. It was a rueful smile. He was too easy, he knew. He could never take a push without wanting to push back with all he had, some part of him always pleased just to have the attention.

He spared a moment to be glad it was Brutus who would be handling the negotiations for the grain shipments. When he glanced at his co-consul, it was clear by the man's frown that he agreed.

Servilia was in fine form throughout the dinner; one might never guess that she was hosting the mother of her former lover's child. She led the conversation nimbly past such thorny topics as consuls beheaded on the shores of Alexandria or consuls stabbed on the floor of the Senate. She asked after Alexandrian art, fashion, and theater, and Antony actually found himself attending the conversation, for he had always been a lover of theater.

But Cleopatra must've been one who enjoyed a little confrontation in her conversation, for in one lull of talk she said: “I do feel some measure of grief and awkwardness, dining here. Caesar was as a husband to me.”

Conversation in the vicinity died down. Brutus glanced anxiously at his mother; Servilia continued smiling thinly at Cleopatra. A few seats away, Cassius sat forward and opened his mouth—

“Every woman's husband and every man's wife, is how I believe that bitter old dog Curio the elder once put it,” said Antony. He helped himself to some more fruit salad.

This old witticism did not amuse his dinner companions, which on the whole was not surprising, he reflected; there was distinct possibility that Caesar had at some point fucked every person in the room. Except Brutus, of course. Antony's chewing slowed, and his troubled eyes flicked up to his co-consul. Probably except Brutus?

“He was a fickle man,” said Servilia. “But please do not let yourself feel the fool for accepting his attentions.”

“I could never regret an association that gifted me with my beloved son,” was the unbothered reply. One would think she did not realize the mention of a foreign bastard was at all impolitic.

Antony grinned. He was enjoying himself immensely – best dinner of their consulship thus far. Brutus sent him a quelling look.

“Brutus,” said Cassius, “Have you heard the news of Quintus Pompey, carried down the Appian these past few hours? He has quit the city.”

Antony's grin quieted. It was doubtful Quintus left to spend the summer sun-bathing by the sea. These days, no one left Rome by their own accord without some plan to return with an army at their back.

Brutus was not pleased to have this news brought to his attention in front of their guest. Internal dysfunction probably wasn't good for trade negotiations. So he said, in his best Public Brutus voice, “Yes, he came and informed me of his trip. Problems with the planting at one of his estates, I believe.”

It was impossible to tell if Cleopatra believed the lie; she was occupied combing her son's hair back from his forehead and encouraging him to eat the _peculiar Italian fare_. But looking at the faint knowing curve of her lips, Antony did not doubt she'd heard every word exchanged.  
  


* * *

  
He had just dismissed Eros after a little buggering to take the day's edge off, and was about to collapse into bed when the floor outside his room creaked and the door flew open. Brutus was white-faced and sweating, as if he'd ran the length of the house to fetch up at his door like a piece of petrified wood.

“Brutus,” he said.

“You—” He shut his mouth, shook his head once, and paced away.

Antony waited five seconds and went to shut the door, only for him to appear again.

“Brutus,” he said.

“Antony,” he said rapidly, “Tell me you didn't rob the treasury of the Temple of Ops.”

Ah. “Ah.”

He stepped aside and spread his arm to indicate he should come in. Brutus entered and paced feverishly along the length of the bed. He kept glancing over at him and away again, like he could not bare to let his gaze rest any one place for longer than a second.

“Well?” he demanded. “Tell me you didn't take 600 million sestertii from the Temple of Ops.”

Antony turned back to his bed, bypassing his co-consul to stretch out. Through a groan of relief, he said, “It was more like 700, I believe.”

“Oh, gods beneath us,” said Brutus, clutching his head. “Why? Why have you done this?”

He was too tired to even have fun with it. “I have soldiers to pay and veterans to settle on the land. Hardly nefarious.”

“But why didn't you talk to me about it first? Do you know what this looks like?”

“Am I not consul?” he said, rolling over to look at him seriously. “Am I not empowered, same as you?”

“Yes, but warning me so that I am not blindsided by the – frankly _alarming_ – sum to Cicero's obvious pleasure seems like basic fucking manners,” snapped Brutus.

“...Sorry,” he offered. Brutus made a rude noise in response, and he spared a moment for idle fantasies of how he may shut him up. Unlikely dreams, but: he let his eyes drift half closed.

Meanwhile, still pacing, Brutus said, “The problem with you, Antony, is that you only know one way to do things.”

The idle fantasy dissipated and in its place tension flooded.

“Is that so,” he said evenly, thinking, _you've forgotten who I do these things for._

“Don't take my meaning too harshly – you're hardly alone in your way of thinking. It's been a problem for a while now in our politics, as I'm sure you've noticed.”

“I do seem to recall a time not so long ago when someone showed up at my side, suggesting murder was the solution to all our problems.”

Brutus ignored this with obvious effort and continued, “But don't you see, if we keep following those old patterns, our backs will always be against the wall.”

“But at least we'd still be together, hey, Brutus?” He levered himself up on his elbows and smiled down the length of his body at him.

“Seven hundred _million_ ,” the man whispered again to the far wall, anguished.

He sighed gustily. “In the absence of a greater plan, I am merely doing my duty as I see fit. You know me, I don't complain—”

“Don't complain, what lie is this?” cried Brutus, lunging up to the side of the bed. “Hardly a day goes by when you are not informing me over breakfast how I have ruined your life!”

He waved, dismissive. “Theatrics, old boy. Speaking of: why this hysterical show of surprise? You know if Cicero fails in the courts, Octavian will next try to have his adoption formally ratified by public assembly. It's going to take an awful lot of bribes to make that go away.”

“What's your point?”

“With how long you've known me, did you honestly expect me to stand by and do _nothing_?”

This stopped Brutus – stopped him completely. His hands, which had been massaging his temples as he groaned, dropped to his sides and, as abruptly as if someone had sliced the tendons behind his knees, he folded down hard onto the bed, dipping the mattress at Antony's hip. Brutus stared down at him, aghast.

“You're right,” he said faintly.

“Mm, well.” He tried to play off the moment, to hide how disconcerted he was by his friend's reaction.

“This is like the conspiracy all over again,” said Brutus, almost to himself. He drew his hands up and ran them over his head, through his hair, making it stand on end and generally look like he'd just been— “I keep. Standing still. While others try to shove me into place in their plans. I pretend as if refusal to act is as good as action. But it's not, is it?”

Antony frowned. This wasn't the usual melodrama of Private Brutus. This was something else. Forgetting himself, he reached for him. “Brutus,” he said.

His hand got within a whisper's length of his arm when the other man stood. He didn't look at Antony when he shook his head and said, “I need to go. I need to think.”

He started for the door, and all Antony could do was drop the hand – he hadn't known what he was doing with it – and call uselessly after him again, to no avail. He fell back on his bed, feeling out of sorts. He told himself he was not feeling particularly pleased at the thought of another three-cup plan, but this felt different.


	2. Chapter 2

Having taken possession of the treasury of the Temple of Ops, he wasted no time attending to his veterans. He set up a distribution center on the Field of Mars the very next day.

Except it turned out Octavian had chosen the only spot that did not rend one blind in the afternoon sun reflecting off the Tiber. Antony had little choice but to situate himself close by, one hundred feet to the North. The crowds on the Field of Mars were getting confused about which line they belonged in. It was a mess. Antony persevered.

“It's easier if you think of it like a siege,” he said to Vorenus, who stood steadfastly just behind his right shoulder through all the long hours.

“Of course, sir. This is exactly as I remember the siege of Alesia,” said Vorenus, eyeing a pair of men who, upon leaving Octavian's dais with their full purses, appeared to be joining the back of Antony's line.

It was dull work, but then all consular work was dull. At least this task was important; he recognized many of the men who came up for their allotment. Talking to them for a time was like glimpsing a life he might have had: if he'd fallen further, if Caesar hadn't become his patron. Even among the men he did not personally know, he intimately felt the looks they wore: that particularly deadly fatigue of being furloughed too long, of the world washing its hands and declaring one no longer useful. Unshaven faces, dulled eyes, softening muscles. Between a long future that looked like that or a short one that involved being cut down in the street like an animal, he wasn't sure which he'd choose.

Father Mars, let me die in a war, he thought.

Presently, a smooth-skinned, slight figure slipped along the line of grizzled soldiers and veterans. Octavian had apparently decided to take a break.

“Come to issue a protest against the use of temple treasury funds?” he asked, before the boy could speak.

“I would never argue with any act that takes care of Roman veterans,” said Octavian. He addressed the words more to the men in line than Antony.

Had he always been like this, he wondered. He tried to remember Octavian as a younger boy, but truthfully he hadn't stood out much from the background in Atia's house. A quiet, occasionally sickly body occupying couches. It had been easy to forget he was any relation to Caesar at all. Now it was plain to see he seemed to possess all of his ruthlessness and none of his sense of fun.

Antony would gladly go the rest of his life continuing not to notice him – call it a favor to an old bedmate – but for the fact the boy had tried to feed him to a lion.

“Lucius Vorenus,” said Octavian, now looking past Antony to his guard, “I was sorry to hear of the passing of your wife and children.”

Before Vorenus could injure himself uttering a polite response, Antony said flatly, “What do you want?”

Octavian turned back to him. “I was hoping to set up a meeting with you and your co-consul, that we might discuss the issue of my inheritance. Now that you've seen how intent I am upon my course, I think it would be prudent to re-open negotiations.”

“Intent on your course?” He had the stones, he's give him that. “Are you actually admitting to my face you attempted to commit that cowardly act of violence against my person?”

Octavian paused and tilted his head. “You're referring to the lion that was set loose on the grounds of the old Vento estate.”

“What else?”

What would have been amusement on a more human face flickered over the surface of Octavian. “I didn't try to have you killed, Antony.”

He wanted to scoff, but his spirit was sinking; he could see the boy was not lying. He remembered, suddenly: the graffiti had depicted both he and Brutus. But only Antony had been the target of assassination.

“Why would I kill you,” continued Octavian, “when your blundering will surely provide so many opportunities to improve my image as I start my political career? I merely took advantage of a rumour and co-opted some of the symbolism from the attempt. A lion – it's quite good. The people have responded favorably in the test neighborhoods where we placed the images.”

Antony stood up and leaned over the table, putting his face close to those odd, unmoving features. “You realize I could kill you right now? There are a thousand men here who will stand before Lustitia and swear it was self-defense,” Vorenus shifted in likely disapproval behind him, but Antony did not doubt the man would act as his oath demanded.

“I thought you would be the better man to approach, to reason with,” said Octavian, light in his eyes shifting as he recalculated and drew back. “As your love for my father was well-known, and Brutus is thought to have been the main instigator to the crime against him. I see now that was a mistake.”

“You mistake was assuming anything about me,” he agreed. “After all, if my love for Caesar could not help Caesar, what made you think you could use it to lay claim to his fortune?”

Octavian stepped back to take his leave, but he did so slowly, with measured steps, as if to make it look like anything but a retreat. “You should be careful, Antony. The reactions to my images suggest the people of Rome are not so tired of fighting that they will not be roused upon proper provocation.”

Antony may resent his role. He may daily be confronted with tasks and issues he feels incapable of solving. But if there was one thing he was certain of, it was that he could sway a crowd – his colleagues in the Senate may be changeable and undecided, but the people loved him.

“Oh,” he said to the boy, “I'm counting on it.”  
  


* * *

  
Once during a night attack on their siege works at Alesia, Antony had taken a close slingshot lead to the head. If he hadn't been wearing his helmet, or if it had hit him an inch lower than it did, he might very well have died. Instead he fought on until deep into the night, and even took part of the final cavalry pursuit of the Gauls. But on the trip back to camp, he could barely guide his horse; the pink wash of dawn over the rows of Roman tents was a blur, worse than being drunk. He and his fellow legate had even been brought before Caesar to be commended for their actions in defending the siege works, but by then Antony was so bemused by the pain in his head, he could not understand a word the man said.

“Now, why am I telling you this?” he said to the woman licking his cock. “It's because it reveals something critical about – something.” He frowned, reaching for the thought – and then started slightly as the second woman's head reappeared, and her lips fastened over his left nipple. He made a pleased noise which crescendoed sharply as the thought danced back within his grasp. “Persistence! Perseverance! It was about the importance of... persevering. Siege of Alesia. Yes.”

The first woman let off sucking him for a moment and said, impish, “You've always been very _persistent_.” Her hand stroked him, root to proud head, in case he didn't get her meaning.

His head wasn't feeling too far off from the way it had in his memory, actually. The room wouldn't stay put around the edges of the cavorting bodies. He was thinking he might orient himself better by burying his head between one of his companions' thighs, when Brutus appeared above him.

“Brutus, thank Venus,” he said, raising a hand in something that was between a greeting and a beckon. “There are two women here, and I've only got one mouth.”

The woman tending to his nipple gave a distinctly interested hum. It tickled.

Brutus said, eyes dark, “I sent two slaves to fetch you from here, but you refused.”

“...And?” He blinked up at him, puzzled. “Repeat that sentence privately to yourself, see if it was what you meant to say.”

Slim fingers cupped his balls, the only warning he got before the woman took him deep, her throat working. He groaned. His head fell back and the room went away.

When he could understand sounds and words again, Brutus was saying, voice gone a little hoarse and very strident, “...that Mark Antony was attending an orgy, I said, you must be mistaken. My esteemed colleague knows we are at a very tense juncture in the city right now, and he would never be so careless with his security.”

The woman let off his spent cock and rested her hot cheek next to it on his thigh; he raised a hand and petted her affectionately. Brutus watched: chin up and eyelashes down, his hands clasped behind his back.

It was a few moments before Antony felt like he could speak, and then he said, “It's an orgy, you mother hen, not a stroll through the marketplace. My hosts wouldn't permit anything to happen – after all, if an orgy ended with bloody murder, people would stop coming to orgies. Testicles would explode, the city would grind to a halt, etcetera.”

“Do you know how easy you are to get at while in such a state?” said Brutus in a clipped voice.

He paused. “Are you disparaging my caution or my virtue right now?”

That square patrician jaw somehow hardened further, and he said coldly, “Only one of those had ever previously been considered unassailable.” Brutus looked around. “Where is Lucius Vorenus?”

“I dismissed him for the night.” The man was sorely in need of a good fuck, but grief left his cock limp. He'd looked exceedingly wretched, standing guard for Antony during those first few hours of fun.

Antony finally reached up and cupped the second woman's head, gentle nudging her away from his chest. She folded back on her heels a moment, looked between he and Brutus, and visibly made the decision to try her luck elsewhere in the room.

“Look, I actually have been working,” said Antony, and proudly presented his co-consul with a curling length of paper, much creased from being rolled and folded and laid upon.

Brutus accepted the scroll as if it were a handful of elephant dung. He cast his eyes down the long list of names written upon it and asked, “What is this?”

“They are all the people I could think of who might wish me dead.”

He paused, eyes flicking up. “And you wrote this while getting... orally serviced?”

Antony shrugged and reached backward for a cup of wine. “It helps me think.”

“Then they aren't doing it right,” muttered Brutus. He glanced around with a frown; he had in the past worn the same expression when dissatisfied with the food at an eating establishment. Antony had a brief flash of Brutus asking to speak with the host over subpar fellatio and nearly choked on his wine.

Brutus took no notice. He tucked the scroll away in his toga and folded his arms. “That's enough. We are away.”

“But I – oh, fuck it, fine.” He slowly clambered to his feet, and the room pitched to and fro like a lopsided galley in rough waters. Brutus tried to take hold of his arm to steady him, and he shook him roughly off. The day he couldn't walk himself out of an orgy under his own power was the day he opened his gut.

Brutus was tight-lipped as he brushed past him on his way out of the atrium. A few people waved lazily, and he winked and nodded and generally did his best to pretend like his stomach hadn't began to revolt the moment he was vertical again.

He made it to the darkened street before he calmly stepped to the side, leaned over and threw up. The splatter didn't land on his clothing or sandals; he was well-practiced.

“ _Lovely_ ,” said Brutus behind him. “What a day this is for the dignity of our office.”

Antony said, “Gods, it's not day yet, is it?” and then turned his head and spat.

Brutus had come to the house of ill repute in a litter; the team hurriedly stood the moment the consuls appeared. A couple men stifled yawns; glancing away, Antony yawned himself.

“Alright, well – up with you,” said Brutus, ushering him to the litter. “I'd like to get home quickly and forget this entire night as soon as possible, if you please.”

“Ho, hey, what's this?” Antony asked as Brutus made to climb in with him. He braced his arms over the canopy struts to block his entry. “What are you doing? Get your own.”

“It's my litter,” said Brutus. “I only brought the one.”

“That was short-sighted of you,” said Antony, his earnest tone fading to plaintive as the floaty nausea started creeping back in.

Much aggrieved, Brutus said, “I thought to find you in a more capable state, didn't I. I swear it was just the other day you were boasting about your expert stealth in crossing the city – ”

Grimacing, and with little tolerance to argue just then, Antony moved back and allowed him onto the platform. Brutus ordered them home and drew the curtains shut, concealing them from curious eyes on the street. The increased privacy was mostly an illusion, but it was enough.

The litter raised into the air with an unsteady jolt Antony felt deep in his stomach. He made a faint noise and curled on his side. Brutus dropped a hand to his head and combed through his hair. It was a pinprick of comfort in the rising flood of sickness and self-pity.

“Please don't vomit in my litter,” said Brutus, severe tone a disorienting contrast to the gentle sweep of his fingers.

“Oh, as if you haven't thrown up in this thing yourself,” he gritted out. He really regretted accepting that pipe from the equestrian girl earlier. He shut his eyes tightly against the gauzy movement of the street through the curtains.

The journey back to the house was a three-act play of oppressive silence. Brutus surely had a lengthy screed stored up, but was disinclined to say anything that might be overheard by the litter bearers or passersby on the street.

“ _I hate_ _this_ ,” said Antony.

He didn't think he'd ever said it aloud before. And while he could have been talking about his present state, the only thought in his mind was of the constant threat of assassination and of being consul in general. Maybe Brutus could tell; at his words, the hand in his hair tightened fractionally.

“I'm sorry,” he said quietly.

He was the only person in all of Italy whom Antony would allow to see him like this, and Brutus knew it. He knew it and still did nothing. (Ah, said his sober self somewhere in the distance: there's the self-pity.)

Antony turned his face inward, away from the street, crushing his nose against the other man's hip. He mumbled, “You're always sorry.”  
  


* * *

  
It was a massive relief when they received reports of Quintus recruiting soldiers and intending to build an army in Further Spain. The timing made it as good as an admission of guilt concerning the assassination attempt on Antony, and it demanded a proper military response. Antony aimed to take one legion and limited supplies so he could move swiftly to put down the dissent.

“I find your giddiness unseemly,” said Brutus. He stood in Antony's room, holding his elbows and watching him put on his uniform. “We get news of a planned march on Rome to depose us, and you're practically whistling.”

“Your disapproval would mean more if I had not spent twenty-odd years receiving regular exposure to it.” He waved off Eros and bent to buckle his own boot. “Look, this isn't complicated – of all the problems facing us, this is finally one I can deal with. I would've thought you, of all people, would understand the appeal.”

“Me, of all people?” echoed Brutus, a little hollow.

“Nothing better in this world than to be good at something, eh?” Antony stood and reached for his belt and sword.

Brutus accepted this with a surprisingly bitter smile. He followed him to the door.

He said, dully, “I trust you will meet with success and return a victor. Assuming of course, that you _will_ return, and not decide to stay in Spain and become a – pirate, or start a new republic there, or something.”

Antony laughed. “I would make a great pirate, wouldn't I?”

Impulsively – this is what the prospect of a battle did to him – he wheeled around and planted a rough kiss on Brutus's cheek. He felt the brush of air against his face as the other man huffed a little in surprise. It had been a long time since Antony made the first move. Years. Antony generally only kissed those he fucked or _fucked_.

He drew back and looked into his friend's grave eyes. “Don't look so worried – I'll crush the little fucking upstart.”

“And come back in one piece,” said Brutus, as if that was the important part.

Antony blinked, not knowing how to take it; it was, after all, the farewell command of a lover or family. Finally he said, deciding as ever to make light, “See if you can clean up all the messes while I'm away.”

As his legion rode out of the city, Antony saw his own rising relief reflected in the way Vorenus sat straighter in his saddle beside him.

Rome was a vicious, provoking city. It was the blood that ran through his veins and the mould that shaped every thought in his head. He could be exiled and spend the rest of his days living in obscurity on the far fringe of the provinces, and he would still be Roman. Rome was home.

And he never felt better than when he was leaving it behind.  
  


* * *

  
“I would have you just like this,” said Caesar in his mind's ear.

Antony opened his eyes. The ceiling of his tent was bright, suffused with the light of the early summer sun. Its canvass sides flapped against their restraints in the wind coming across the field. Outside, the camp was fairly quiet; it was early yet. He sat up and scrubbed a weary hand through his hair. He hadn't slept well, again.

Five weeks they'd ridden hard to intercept Quintus's growing force before it crossed into Hispania. Allies throughout the province were quick to offer up intelligence on their whereabouts, and Antony closed the distance to a mere ten miles.

And then in Aquitania, in the foothills of the Pyrenees, Quintus's army had abruptly stopped and turned.

He expected they'd see their first action in the coming day, but what should've been a quick exercise of putting down a disorganized, begrudging rabble was turning swiftly into a much more serious situation. Their quarry hadn't stopped on a whim, but had clearly found favorable ground to dig in and defend.

And then Antony's scouts had returned with reports that set him back on his heels in disbelief.

“Where the _fuck_ did Quintus Pompey get 9,000 men?” he demanded, as his gathered tribunes shook their heads mutely. “When did he do this, and with what fucking resources?”

But he was asking the wrong men. The only people who might have answers were all back in Rome. Quintus's numbers suggested their own answer: this had been in the works for longer than a couple months – possibly from before the Ides of March. He knew many of the Liberators had been discontented with Brutus's decision to ask Antony for help.

“Will we withdraw and wait for supplies and reinforcements?” asked Vorenus, perfectly neutral. Death was nothing to him.

Antony had fought and won against larger forces before. “No,” he said. “I'd bet a single legion of our men against any number of miserable wretches who'd follow a man like Quintus.”

It was what Caesar would do, he realized as he sat in his tent alone the next morning. He was doing exactly what Caesar would do.  
  


* * *

  
It was the war trail, rather than the city, he'd always associated with the man. Once they left Italy behind, Caesar was everywhere. Antony saw him on the road, in the camps, the fields. He caught himself looking around for his grand command tent, with its pillars and windows and comfortable bed. He gave directions to his men and waited for the arch commentary, the glimmer of approval or a quick, forbidding frown.

Years ago, Alesia had been the turning point for him; after the siege, Caesar refused to let him return to his own tent, insisting that Antony soak his tired muscles in the general's own tub, that he lay his aching, sodden head on the general's own pillow.

After twelve hours of solid sleep, he'd opened his eyes with a clearer mind and looked across the tent; Caesar had finished a line on his tablet, set down his stylus with some finality, and risen from his desk.

All told, if he bothered to tally it up, he only warmed the man's bed for a few months, and what was a few months in a lifetime? Except memory didn't rest upon such cold and rational math. Everything after Alesia was of a fundamentally different nature than what came before. Antony was different. He knew then what it was to be valued as a whole instead of butchered for the convenient parts. To be prized rather than tolerated.

It hadn't lasted – nothing did – but he could not forget the feeling of Alesia, of finally arriving to a possibility he hadn't realized existed.  
  


* * *

  
The courier arrived three days into whatever the fuck this was – not a siege, nor a battle, but rather a floating series of skirmishes, wherein they repeated were engaged and then abandoned mid-coitus, daily taking a few losses but mainly frustrating and exhausting the men.

Antony thought it likely that Quintus had already started into the Pyrenees, leaving a sizable mobile force to cover his retreat by fucking about the foothills in a child's game of chase. His officers all agreed with this estimation, but more to the point, Vorenus thought it probable as well. Morale was likely low among Quintus's number, but no matter: they still had the literal high ground. They could keep shifting from hill to hill and recover their spirits watching Antony's men scramble after them.

This was not the swift, clean battle he had desired, and so he was in a bad mood when the messenger entered his command tent, the sweat of his hard ride still on his brow.

The last thing Antony wanted was news of Rome. He looked up, saw the note with Brutus's consular seal, and said without thinking, “Oh, what now? Has the Aventine burnt to the ground? Has Hannibal been resurrected from the underworld to flatten the city?”

The courier didn't bat an eye. “Couldn't say, sir. The message – Consul Brutus said it was for your eyes only. Upon pain of death.” His eyes said he'd prefer not to die, but he was too dedicated to his profession to admit it aloud.

“Fine,” said Antony, rounding the desk and thrusting an impatient palm out. “Give it over, then go get a drink and some kip.”

Under the curious eyes of his officers and the distant, blank stare of Vorenus, he leaned against the front of his desk and unsealed the letter. He read the message, expression unchanging. At the bottom, he paused.

He read the message again – three times over. He forced his eyes not to linger as they wanted on the signature. The fist that held his heart in an iron grip was relaxing, opening.

“Muster the third and forth cohorts,” he said.

“News from Rome, sir?” prompted Vorenus neutrally.

“It would seem,” he said slowly, “Consul Brutus has brokered a deal between the Egyptian queen and the boy Octavian. There is to be a public announcement of her son Caesarion's paternity. Octavian is relinquishing claim to the name in exchange for full access to Caesar's estate.” He looked up with great effort from the note. “Brutus says he is, of course, confident we will not need them, but he is sending the rest of Caesar's former legions to join us.”

Surprise and dawning pleasure was reflected on the officers' faces. Antony stepped back around his desk, throwing the courier note on a brazier as if it was nothing.

“So: muster the cohorts,” he said. “We can't have our late arrivals thinking they are here to rescue us – when they get here, the only thing they should see is the enemy burning their dead.”

He found he was smiling, a little.  
  


* * *

  
As he saluted and left the tent, Vorenus glanced for but a moment in passing at the crumpled note kindling on the coals. He did not understand the signature he read there. It was easy to put it from his mind, for he had men to prepare and another battle ahead.

With no one else to witness it, _Antonicus_ existed in thick black ink drawn by a firm hand for a few seconds more before it was eaten by the flames, and then no one could say it had ever been, or what it had meant.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1) Antony reportedly did indeed rob the treasury of the Temple of Ops for the stated purpose of settling veterans/paying soldiers.  
> 2) It's been really fun thinking over what steps Octavian would take in the no-amnesty/declared tyrant scenario. Here's hoping I can do even a fraction of “justice” to that wily bastard.  
> 3) Quintus is basically going to be Sextus Pompey in this series. To kill him right after Caesar, as the show did, was so... wasteful! Especially given how much trouble Sextus caused the triumvirate.  
> 4) Regarding travel times, HBO essentially did to Rome what SPN did to North America, and I've tried to tug it back in the right direction a little but according to [Ancient Rome Mapquest](https://omnesviae.org) I've still got these guys basically riding a bullet train around the empire. Mea culpa!


End file.
